


Cameo

by thisbluespirit



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: 1920s, 1940s, 1980s, Blood, Community: 100fandoms, Community: genprompt_bingo, Gen, Ghosts, Murder, Time Loop, Time slip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 23:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17887565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: “Goodness,” she says, turning around to find a stranger on the other side of the counter.  “I didn’t see you come in.”





	Cameo

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 100fandoms prompt #80 "ghosts", genprompt_bingo square "Tragedy" and 100 Elements prompt #15 Jet/Jasper/Tin – coffee shop & heirloom/antique
> 
> Some observations/attitudes are due to the POV/signifying different time periods here, as I hope is reasonably obvious.

_1981_

“Goodness,” she says, turning around to find a stranger on the other side of the counter. “I didn’t see you come in.”

The man smiles at her, and she sizes him up: a nice young Indian gentleman – a novelty in a place like Fairley – and the smile is charming. She pauses, narrows her gaze, and re-evaluates. Maybe a touch _too_ charming. He could be a salesman in that suit, probably could sweet talk a body into buying anything. 

She half expects him to ask her if she’s thought about getting life insurance, but he only leans forward on the counter and says, in equally charming, cultured tones, “One cup of coffee, please.” He pauses, his gaze straying over the rest of the wares on display. “How much for a slice of cake?”

She looks over with him at the iced coffee cake, decorated with walnuts, the victoria sponge next to it, filled with jam and dusted with icing sugar, and she frowns over the answer, suddenly unsure. The coins he offers her don’t seem right.

“What’s your name?” he asks, tilting his head, watching her with genuine interest. _Not_ a salesman, then. “You must know that.”

She stares back at him and tries to think. She knows that, of course she does. Everyone knows their own name, don’t they? She looks at the cakes again and feels uncertain, as if she or the room is wobbling and might fall at any minute.

“And I would like a slice of cake. If you didn’t mind.”

She shakes herself. “Yes. They’ll be –”

“Thirty pence?” he murmurs. “Two pounds fifty? A shilling?”

She laughs at her foolishness. “Goodness, fancy me forgetting! Let me just get you that coffee first, and I’ll see to the cake after.”

“Why not, Mrs -?”

She ignores the implied question. She does know her name. It’s a silly notion, to think she might have forgotten it over the years. (How many years?) It’s Mrs – Mrs – Jones. Yes. Or something like that. Jones. Thomas. Davis. Her husband’s parents were Welsh. And her given name, that’s Elsie.

She beams at him as she passes over the cup and saucer, but that’s when she notices the spots of blood on the counter. She gives an exclamation of dismay and wipes them away, but they keep growing.

It’s her blood, she realises, much too late.

***

_2017_

“Goodness,” she says, turning around to find a stranger on the other side of the tea room. “I didn’t see you come in.”

The young woman studying her iPad over at the table in the far corner, lifts her head and grins across at her. “Your wifi doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Oh, not in here, love,” she says, as the young woman makes her way over to the counter. She’s not seen her before, and strangers are rare in Fairley. Casually dressed, so not here on business. Perhaps she’s a rambler, on a day trip? They do get a few of those. But Fairley’s not the scenic sort of village. It’s nondescript and run down, not picturesque, and they don’t get tourists. There’s barely anything for the inhabitants to stay for now.

“No wifi?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t hold with those new-fangled things. Besides, people come in here to get away from the noise and the bustle. Don’t want them bringing it in with them.”

“Or maybe it wouldn’t have been the right time,” the stranger says, her gaze dark and serious now. Then she turns to the glass case filled with sandwiches and cakes and looks at the muffins, the cupcakes, and brownies.

“I don’t know about that.”

“And,” says the young woman, biting her lip, as if chewing over a thought, “maybe they just don’t come in at all?”

And how would she run a tea-shop if that were so? It’s an odd question. Silly, really. Best not to waste time thinking about it.

“Never mind anyone else,” she says, smiling at her customer. “What would you like, my love? It’ll have to be plain, though, mind. Those machines are out of order.” (More new-fangled things, for making coffee – as if she hasn’t been doing that for decades without them. It’s no wonder that she can’t remember what they’re called. It’s not important.)

The stranger looks behind her, as if memorising the shelves and their contents. “Mrs Jones, isn’t it?”

 _Something like that, yes._ “Yes.”

“Have you noticed anything odd in here? Anything that seems out of place? Something new – or maybe something old.”

She hasn’t got time to reply: there’s a sudden, impossible pain between her ribs, and then there’s something dripping on the floorboards. Oh, and it’s on her apron, red –

***

_1924_

“Goodness,” she says, turning around to find a stranger on the other side of the tea room. “I didn’t see you come in.”

The woman looks as if she’s come from a party, wearing a knee-length frock of green and gold silk and chiffon, with back and green beads sewn onto it in patterns. She’s a stranger, a dark-skinned lady; she’d have remembered seeing her before in Fairley. Perhaps she’s come from over Rotham way; they’ve a grand house there. Perhaps she’s the daughter of a diplomat or a foreign princess, or a singer. Whoever she is, it’s odd to find her here in the tea shop, because they don’t get many visitors of any kind in Fairley.

(There _was_ one, though. But she doesn’t remember that; she doesn’t remember that one at all.)

“You’ve got a lot of antique objects,” the woman says, staring around the room, rather than walking over to the counter to order. She doesn’t sound like someone who’s just come from a party. She sounds more like someone who’s come from the local council to investigate a complaint.

Mrs Jones watches as the woman picks up a vase and runs long fingers up and down it, while wrinkling her nose in concentration, as if she’s reading it somehow. She then glances up at the picture behind Mrs Jones’s head. “And then there’s all the furniture. None of it is less than two decades old. I’m not surprised you’ve had trouble.” She puts the vase down on the sideboard and meets Mrs Jones’s gaze. “Tell me, what is the year?”

“What year?” Mrs Jones says in bewilderment and then laughs at the oddness of it. Oh, but if she tries to think, she’s not sure she remembers hemlines ever being this short, and then sometimes she thinks she remembers them rising scandalously ever further upwards. Sometimes the coins are wrong, sometimes the prices are too much –

“What year is it?” the stranger asks again, with more intensity, crossing to the counter and gripping the side of it.

She can’t answer. There’s blood on the pile of white, laundered napkins beside her as her hand goes to the cameo brooch at her throat, pinning the lace of her collar in place.

It’s her blood.

***

_1942_

“Goodness,” she says, turning around to find three strangers on the other side of the tea room. “I didn’t see all of you come in.”

She thinks for a moment she’s seen them before, all three of them – but, no, she couldn’t have done. She’d have remembered these three, in Fairley. She shakes herself, not wanting to appear rude in any case, and takes the gentleman’s ration card. She’s sure he’s a proper gentleman, too, in that suit. The younger of the two women is wearing a flowing, floral print dress, her hair kept back in a net, while the other is wearing a shirt and trousers. Perhaps she’s a Land Girl.

“The whole cycle is too short,” the man says, almost as if she’s not there. They seem to know each other; they’re busy arguing about some sort of academic point.

She relaxes. Academics. Of course. That explains everything. You never know with academics, always studying all sorts of odd things.

“Too many objects.”

“I should tidy, I know,” she agrees. “But there’s history in all these things.”

The woman in the summer frock gives a brief grin. “That’s the problem.”

“Jasper,” says the other, giving a nod to Mrs Jones’s brooch, pinned to her blouse, but it’s the younger girl who is suddenly standing next to her behind the counter, reaching for the brooch. “Yes, Tin. That’s it.”

The world seems to freeze around the four of them, as if a fog has crept into the room and is holding the tea shop in one instant of time. She can hardly move, hardly breathe, but it’s almost a relief. She can half remember now – she’s died over and over on this spot. Too many times over too many years.

She knows now. She’s Elsie Jones. She runs a tea shop. The year is 1909. Not that it makes all that much difference in a forgotten place like Fairley. The newspaper headlines are all far away things, unimportant next to village news, whether it’s rumours of a war in Europe, or suffragettes making trouble for everyone again. She worries about her niece’s eldest daughter and the price of flour; these are the more immediate concerns of life.

And then _he_ walks in, a stranger, the gold in his hair glinting in the sunlight as he stands in the doorway, watching her. Oh, yes, she remembers now. She shivers.

The room seems to tremble with her. The girl next to her – Tin, such a funny nickname – holds the brooch tightly in her fist, and there are lines on her forehead, as if it’s an effort, as if she’s battling something immense and unseen.

Jasper, the man, lays a hand on her arm as if trying to help.

“She’s all right,” says the other woman, her gaze fixed on Tin. “She’ll do it.”

The fog lifts. Everything changes. It’s that day again, in 1909. _He_ comes into the tea-shop. He looks a little bit familiar, perhaps, but if that’s true, she’ll never work out why. There isn’t time.

He orders a cup of tea, and as soon as she turns around to get it, that’s it.

They say if you’re going to be killed, nine times out of ten it’ll be by someone you know. She’s the odd one out. Or perhaps she does know him. She doesn’t think so, but there is that echo of familiarity, something about him… Maybe she isn’t his first, maybe she read about him in the papers.

The blood dripping down onto the old, polished floorboards is hers.

But this time, that’s it. She’s gone. There’s peace. She doesn’t remember anything at all.

***

Tin opens up her hand to reveal a grey lump of metal in the centre of her palm, the brooch safely encased and negated.

“You’ve done it?” Jasper still has his hand on her arm.

Tin smiles and nods.

“I told you,” says Jet. “You should know by now she’s tougher than she looks.”

Jasper holds out a hand, and Tin passes the brooch-as-was to him.

“Gold mount,” he murmurs, turning the object over, his eyes glowing faintly orange-brown. “Mid 19th century. Stone. Agate. Passed down in one family.”

The tea shop around them has disappeared, replaced by an empty room, gloomy, dust-covered and in bad repair. There’s a battered for sale sign in the window.

“Why did it happen?” Jet asks, taking the object from Jasper.

Jasper’s eyes return to his normal dark brown. He shrugs. “An estate agent found the cameo brooch in the corner. She put it over there on that shelf. It seems to have triggered the memories – put back in place, it gave something an opportunity to resurrect Mrs Jones and bring her forward through the years.”

They all look at coated brooch for a few more seconds, then Jasper pockets it, and they all relax, as if a secret signal has been given.

“We need to go,” says Jet. “That’s why I’m here. Sapphire and Steel are in trouble –”

Tin raises an eyebrow. “Again?”

“Yes,” says Jet. “It’s serious. Silver’s beside himself.”

Jasper reaches the door first, pausing there to brush the dust from his suit, and straighten his tie. “I trust you don’t mean that literally. I’ve always found one of him is more than enough.”

“You should ask Copper about that,” says Jet, distracted into a moment of amusement. “He told me once that – well, that can wait. In the meantime, we’re needed elsewhere.”

“We always are,” Tin says as they vanish, her voice only an echo in an empty, long-forgotten tea-shop.

All its ghosts are gone.


End file.
